The Haunting of Gillespie House (3 page)

The last room was my bedroom, and I broke into it with the same burst of energy I’d used to tackle the bathroom, waving my stick at the shadows. It looked exactly the way I’d left it; my books were stacked on the desk and my bed was half-heartedly made. I quirked up the quilt to look between the bedframe and the floor and checked in the closet, but my room was empty.

I wandered back into the hallway, letting the candlestick sag down by my side as I rubbed my dusty sleeve across the sweat that drenched my face.

The noise had definitely come from this floor; it had been too loud and too close to have been on the ground level, and the stairs creaked so badly that I would have heard someone trying to sneak down them.

I looked at the ceiling—yellowish splotches stained the paint around the edges where water had seeped in—and tried to work out where the noise had come from. It had sounded as though it was directly under my feet, and I’d been in the second-to-last room, which was…

Above the locked room.

“Of course,” I said bitterly. I walked down the hallway to stand in front of the door and tried the handle a final time. It still stuck.

I got onto my hands and knees, dropping the candlestick, and looked through the crack between the door and the floor. The light was very poor; I remembered the window had curtains over it. Coupled with the cloudy sky, they gave the room a level of light similar to twilight. Even so, I could make out a number of shadowy shapes; the room definitely had furniture in it. I crouched there, straining to see, trying to make out any sort of motion among the swimming shadows.

Then creaks, loud and persistent, rose from the floor below my hands. I pulled back with a jerk and listened as the floor moaned. The noise moved away from me, towards the opposite side of the hall.

I grabbed for my candlestick, fumbled, and dropped it. The brass made a hard metallic
thunk
as it hit the wooden floor.

“Damn, damn, damn it all,” I said under my breath, and clambered to my feet, clutching the candlestick against my chest. My heart felt ready to explode.

I took the steps quickly, almost recklessly, against my common sense. Once I was on the ground floor, I turned and scrambled towards the room below the hallway, which turned out to be the library.

The bare shelves seemed much starker and more hostile than they had the day before. The room was U-shaped, with the middle protrusion filled with bookcases. I edged around the perimeter, keeping my back to the shelves as I held up my weapon and checked around the stiff dingy-blue couches and the curtains.

It was empty. I felt lost, so I went back out the way I’d come, into the dining room. I checked the kitchen and the hollowed-out ballroom on the way past then ended up in the living room. I grabbed my mobile and the slip of paper off the coffee table then hurried to the front door and the safety of the outside.

I didn’t start breathing properly until I’d put two dozen paces between myself and the front porch. I stopped under one of the elm trees that flanked the driveway and scanned the front of the building with my eyes. There didn’t seem to be any sign of a break-in. Not that there would have been—I’d left the front door unlocked. The only motion I could see came from the bushes and trees that moved lazily in the breeze.

I flopped down in the tall grass and dropped my candlestick. I took a moment to close my eyes and breathe in the oxygen, which tasted sweet and fresh compared to the dusty upstairs rooms. Then I held up the slip of paper Mrs Gillespie had given me and punched the number into my mobile.

“Yes?” a cool voice answered after the fourth ring.

“Hi, uh, Mrs Gillespie,” I stuttered, feeling incredibly under-qualified to explain the situation adequately. “I, uh, think someone broke into the house.”

“What, Elle?” she barked. “What happened?”

“I was in the top floor when I heard a door slam,” I said. “I, uh, went downstairs but couldn’t see anyone.”

“Is there a car outside the house?” she asked.

I scanned the front lawn as though a car might have materialised in the minute I’d been talking to Mrs Gillespie. It hadn’t.

“No, sorry.” I cringed and pressed my palm into my forehead.
Why am I apologising for the lack of cars?
My brain had shut down under the coldly critical tone coming from the other end of the phone call.

“Don’t worry about that then.” Mrs Gillespie sounded suddenly tired. “It would take most of the day to walk up and down our driveway. If anyone was trying to rob us, they’d bring a car.”

“But I heard—”

“There’s a door in the house that doesn’t close properly. It keeps drifting open and slamming in the wind. I’ve been telling Harold to fix it for years, but… ugh.” She stopped herself as if making a conscious effort not to criticise her husband. “Well, it’s not fixed yet.”

“Oh.” I was starting to feel stupid. “There… there were some creaking noises, too…”

“It’s an old house, honey.” Mrs Gillespie sighed. “The creaks are part of its nature. Unless you saw something or heard someone speaking, I think you’re safe.”

The stupid feeling was increasing, but with it came a boiling anger.
If there’s a door that keeps slamming, wouldn’t you tell me about it before leaving me alone in your house for a month? I could have had a heart attack, you stupid—

“Is there anything else?” Mrs Gillespie’s polite tone carried an undercurrent of irritation.

I searched the rooms! I risked life and limb to protect your damn house!
“No, sorry for disturbing you. Have a nice, um, retreat.”

She hung up without saying goodbye. I threw down my phone and let myself fall backwards, then vented my anger and stress with a strangled scream of frustration. I wished I could teleport back to my apartment, even with its weird smells and obnoxious neighbours… anything to avoid setting foot in the Gillespie house again.

I did the next best thing: I pocketed my mobile, threw the candlestick towards the front porch, and set out on a walk to burn off some of my agitation.

The clouds gave the yard a bleak ethereal look. I stopped at the top of the drop off, just as I had the night before, and looked down at the woods. The incline, dotted with boulders and waist-high weeds, looked strangely inviting, as though I could step onto it, and it would carry me in a smooth rush down to the embrace of the light-dappled trees.

I turned back to the house and again saw the bay window, the only thing protruding out from the otherwise-smooth side of the house. The curtains were moving gently from the breeze, but I couldn’t see beyond them. I wished I’d asked Mrs Gillespie what was in there when she was on the phone.

A spotty grove of anaemic trees poked out from behind the house. I hadn’t seen the complete yard yet, so I started walking towards the outcropping. Past the building’s back corner were two small sheds, and beyond those were a series of raised garden beds.

I walked between the knee-high wooden boxes. Many of them still had stakes poking out of the ground, and layers of straw covered some, but clearly, nothing edible had grown in them in a long time. Still tethered to the stakes, shrivelled and brittle tomato stalks had been left to die. Even the weeds that had stubbornly grown through the straw looked as though they were one hot day away from death.

It was far more depressing than the inside of the house. I reached the end of the rows and turned back to gaze at them. Someone must have spent hundreds to build the gardens. I couldn’t imagine how someone could just…
forget
them like that.

Beyond the garden was a stretch of grass, then the trees rose out of the gully to border the edge of the property. Some sort of building was hidden behind the first cluster of trees; I could see a dark-grey stone pillar and what looked like a roof. Gravel crunched under my feet as I approached the structure to get a better look. The trees were stockier and grew more closely together than those in the forest, and I had to push through meters of the dense, scratchy branches before I reached my goal. Past the trees was a tall, dark wrought-iron fence. A little beyond that were rows of gravestones.

I jumped away from the fence and became tangled in the trees again. I struggled, earning myself a series of scratches across my arms, but I managed to get out, back on the house-side of the organic divider. I stuffed my shaking hands into my jacket pockets as I looked from the looming house to the tree-hidden burial site.

The house is big
, I thought.
Maybe it wasn’t always a private home. It could have been a school or a retirement building at one time.

That made sense. I mentally counted off the number of bedrooms on the top two floors. The building was large enough to be a small hotel, even.

I turned back to the graveyard, my initial shock waning in the face of morbid fascination. Instead of trying to press through the dense trees again, I followed the edge of the wood, occasionally catching glimpses of iron between the branches. About twenty paces along the trees thinned, and I was able to reach the fence without much struggle.

The gate stretched at least three feet above the top of my head, and elaborate ironwork swirls and patterns wove down its length. I looked through the bars at the graveyard; beyond the gravestones, a mausoleum rose like a miniature black cathedral, its tar-darkened doors fastened shut with a wooden plank.

The tombstones stood about it in no apparent order. I counted at least a dozen, but more could have been hidden behind the mausoleum. They were all old. Some were cracked; others were nearly toppling over as the ground under them bulged. Two had the entire top halves snapped off, though I couldn’t see where the tips were.

“Wow…” I whispered, wishing I’d brought a camera.

The gate was old. Rust ran down it in dark streaks, but it wasn’t bolted. I pushed against the left side and was rewarded when it moved inwards with a drawn-out screech.

Dirt, leaves, and grime had built up around the base of the gate, and it jammed after moving a foot. The gap was just wide enough for me to fit through, so, casting one final glance at the back of the house, I slipped into the graveyard.

It felt surreal, as though the air inside the gated grounds were heavier. I watched my feet as I stepped between the graves. Unlike the rest of the property, the spaces around the tombstones seemed impervious to weeds. The dry earth cracked in places, and a few errant patches of grass poked out of it, but there were no other plants or greenery.

I looked at the name etched on the nearest stone and stopped short.
Phillipa Gillespie
, it read, its lines faded almost to obscurity.

Is this the Gillespies’ relative?
The year of death was nearly two hundred years old.
Maybe they inherited, rather than bought, the house.

The second gravestone had the surname Tonkin, but the one after that belonged to another Gillespie. I moved through the graveyard quickly, checking name after name. I found twelve Gillespies and four Tonkins in total.

A private graveyard, then.
I turned towards the house. The highest parts of its roof were barely visible over the tops of the trees.
They must have lived in there over quite a few generations.

As I walked through the gravestones a second time, I noticed something strange. The birthdates were varied; some were as old as 1795, and the most recent was 1882. All of the death years were the same, though: 1884.

I stalked through the graves, looking for some discrepancy, but there was none. The days and months differed, but every person in that graveyard had passed in the same year.

“What the hell happened here?”

A glint from the direction of the mausoleum caught my eye—a plaque was attached to the door. I approached it and leaned on the thick, rotting wooden plank barring the doorway as I rubbed at the tarnished bronze with my blouse sleeve. It was difficult to read in the poor light, but after some squinting, I was able to make out the inscription.

Here lies Jonathan Gillespie

1840 - 1884

May the Lord have mercy on us all

“Mercy…” I frowned at the script. “Why would
they
need mercy when
he’s
the one that died?”

My skin prickled with unease, and I removed my hand from the wooden barricade, suddenly uncomfortable with touching the tomb. The clouds had grown thicker, darkening the sky. Still, I didn’t think the poor light was entirely down to the weather. I must have been in the graveyard for close to an hour, and the sun would soon be skirting over the mountain’s edge.

I didn’t regret leaving the tombstone-laden field, and I was careful to close the gate behind myself so that it wouldn’t drift open during the night. Whatever was within those wrought-iron constraints was better off staying there.

A cold wind snapped at me as I hurried around the outside of the house, barely sparing a glance at the locked room’s window. I didn’t stop until my foot hit the candlestick that had become lost in the long grass around the porch. I cursed, massaging my stubbed toe, then picked up the bronze rod and continued into the house.

Turning on the lights didn’t do much to chase out the shadows, but at least I could see my way into the kitchen. I hadn’t paid much attention to my body while I was in the graveyard, but the sight of the fridge made me realise I was starving: I’d missed lunch thanks to the slamming door.